Apple is adding a cheaper 8GB iPhone 5C to its smartphone lineup. The new model first appeared on UK carrier O2's site, but has since been added to a number of international Apple Stores including the UK, Australia, and China. In the UK, it's priced at £429, £40 ($66 including sales tax) less than the 16GB model. Should Apple choose to bring the new budget model to the US, the price seems likely to fall somewhere around $499.

An 8GB smartphone for $500. You can buy six Lumia 520s for that - almost one for every day of the week. You have to be utterly void of common sense to buy this phone. Then again, that seems to be the general attitude towards the 5C anyway.

Apple and Samsung business models are very different while both very successful.

Apple business model is not compatible with a true low cost smartphone (or any other product).

Whether one like it or not is not relevant for Apple as long as the business model they did chose is efficient.

And for your information, whether a business model is right or wrong depends on the enterprise success (of lack of) and in the mobile space, the only really successful business models are Apple and Samsung's models.

The fact that you consider them as wrong clearly indicates that you do not understand what a business model is.

Well, Apple has dipped into the low-end realm, albeit not with a smartphone, and it was a good product: The Mac mini. It's had a few bumps in the road (Core Solo, integrated Intel 9xx video) but it's been in constant production in one version or another since 2005.

Well, Apple has dipped into the low-end realm, albeit not with a smartphone, and it was a good product: The Mac mini. It's had a few bumps in the road (Core Solo, integrated Intel 9xx video) but it's been in constant production in one version or another since 2005.

Mac mini is not really low end though. It is perhaps medium end, but you can get PCs much cheaper if you're looking for low end (unless you're saying that exact form factor, in which case there just isn't a low end).